New York City Mayor said Sunday the immigration problem can solve Detroit's dwindling population problem: Send all incoming immigrants to the Motor City for five to 10 years. Getty

May 2, 2011

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The controversy: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a novel plan to solve America's immigration problem: "You pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agreed to go to Detroit and live there for five or 10 years," he said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. Detroit lost a quarter of its population in the last decade, according to census data, and immigrants want to come to the U.S., Bloomberg reasoned. Everyone wins, "at no cost to the federal government." Detroit's mayor, through a spokeswoman, politely declined the offer. But was it meant to be taken seriously?The reaction: "We're not sure if he was being completely serious," but his bizarre proposal has its plusses and minuses, says Joe Weisenthal in Business Insider. It would probably be "a total mess," but hey, a decade in Detroit "would show a serious desire to be an American." But what would the immigrants do? asks Doug Powers in Michelle Maklin's blog. "Work building a wall to keep themselves locked in"? Bloomberg should mind his own city's business. Actually, Detroiters are split on the idea, says Kim Kozlowski in The Detroit News. "Critics said it's an insane idea" for a city with no jobs, and probably illegal, to boot. But Bloomberg's plan had its fans, too. "We can be just as much a melting pot for America as New York is," says lifelong Detroit resident Adrian Green, 41.